


Masha and Dimi

by Margaery



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-27
Updated: 2013-06-27
Packaged: 2017-12-16 08:15:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/859924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margaery/pseuds/Margaery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maria wants things, but she doesn't quite know how to tell Grigor.</p><p>Set the night of Maria's unexpected Wimbledon loss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Masha and Dimi

He looks up. “I’m sorry,” he says, his eyebrows doing that earnest thing that she loves.

Maria cards her fingers through his curls, petting them slowly. She tries not to sigh. For a few seconds she’d almost forgotten the day’s events; Grigor’s lips on her skin are mesmerizing, intoxicating, and sometimes she’s able to lose herself in the moment, letting go of the expectations, the results, the tennis, letting go of _Maria_ and being only _Masha_. For a few seconds, it had been enough – but of course Grigor, poor decent earnest Grigor, had to try to comfort her in words as well as deeds.

Maria doesn’t need comfort. She’s a tennis player. Losses happen. She needs a distraction, that’s all.

“The only reason you should be sorry is if you stop doing that,” she says, pulling his hair playfully.

Grigor smiles. The curve of his lip brushes her nipple, and she shivers, fingers tightening less playfully. 

He still, after all these months, looks at her worshipfully, as if she’s a goddess in his bed. It makes her wonder if this has a future: she has worship enough every day, worship tires her. Sometimes she wishes…but Grigor can’t help the way he feels, doesn’t know she can see the way he looks at her. Either it will change, or it won’t; in the meantime, she has a young Bulgarian hunk in her bed and her life, and there are worse problems.

“I really am sorry, though,” Grigor says, the heat of his breath making her shiver. “It doesn’t seem right that I’m further in a Slam than you.”

He wants reassurance, Maria knows. He wants her to say something about his potential, how his presence deep in Slams is going to become a ubiquitous thing in future. He wants her to laugh and tell him to win Wimbledon for her. And yet the fiercely competitive part of her bristles, wants to snap back that he’s not further than her unless he wins tomorrow – she doesn’t know who he’s playing, maybe she should, but whoever it is, surely nobody’s safe this week.

She bites back that part of her and smiles at him. “You know what I would love?”

“What?” he asks, that eager-puppy look back in his eyes. (He’s so young, Maria thinks. Twenty-two isn’t what it used to be.)

She taps his nose with her finger, draws it down to run it across his lips. They part for her, and her fingertip dips inside; his tongue darts out to taste, and then he sucks on it gently, looking up through his eyelashes at her. 

The sensation makes Maria shiver again, goosebumps running along her arms. 

“What I would love,” she says, “is if instead of being sorry, you could make me forget for a little while.”

It’s a small vulnerability, made slightly bigger by the way she can’t quite keep her voice entirely level at the end. Three months ago she wouldn’t have said it, she would have simply flipped them over and distracted him by other means. Maria is not a person comfortable with vulnerabilities; she likes to be in control, she likes to be aggressive.

But this is not three months ago, and maybe in order to move forward she needs to change her strategy.

Grigor’s eyes are thoughtful, and after a moment he releases her finger in order to press a kiss to her breast. “Well then,” he says, and pushes himself up, supporting his weight on his hands and grinning down at her, “looks like I have a gameplan.”

He looks beautiful suspended like that. Maria reaches out her hand to trace his bicep, and lets herself smile back. “What’s that?” she asks.

Grigor’s grin gets even wider. “You know how loudly you two screamed today?”

She raises an eyebrow. He’d better be going somewhere with this. 

“Wanna bet I can make you scream louder?” he asks, his voice dropping, turning intimate.

Maria’s pretty sure that the neighbors won’t appreciate that. This is Wimbledon, conservative and traditional, and she’s not entirely sure that the British are very good at soundproofing their walls.

Tonight, however, the disapproval of the neighbors might be just what the doctor ordered.

“Go for it,” she says, and feels her smile ripen into a grin, feels it reach her eyes. 

Grigor begins to lower himself down her body, wicked glint in his eyes, and she wants that, she wants him, but… She stops him, hand tightening around his arm. “One warning though.”

“What?” Grigor asks, looking up, all well-toned muscle and manly curves, all teasing eyes and earnest eyebrows, all warm enthusiasm and youthful ardor. 

“Fuck the Academy’s rules about fucking the night before a match,” she says, enunciating. 

“My mouth not enough?” he says, laughter in his voice and his face. 

She runs her foot up his leg, just to watch him suck in his breath. “Your cock is nicer than your backhand, and that’s already pretty nice.”

It’s beautiful how he brightens with the flattery, so young and so open. She can’t help thinking, though, that he shouldn’t show people how much he needs it, how much their approval matters to him. He shouldn’t show weakness to people. 

But then maybe Maria isn’t people.

“Well then,” Grigor says, pressing a kiss to her belly-button, making her giggle and clutch at his shoulders, trying to push him away, “maybe the rules can go to hell. Can’t have my girl left unsatisfied.”

She smiles at him. His voice still sounds a bit awed on the ‘my girl’, but he’s trying. 

Maybe that’s the solution. Maybe they won’t ever be able to be just Masha and Dimi, but maybe they should just keep trying, just keep muddling through. Maybe it will all shake out in the end.

The thing is, though, Maria plays to win. She doesn’t do ‘try’.

“Besides,” Grigor adds thoughtfully, from his current position between Maria’s legs, “with what's happened this week, maybe the best thing to do is to break all the rules. Wimbledon is upside down right now, jesus.”

And okay, it might be unfair that that’s the last straw, when Grigor didn’t even know there was a last straw on the table, but Maria’s done with fair. Today was not fair. Today was slippery, and painful, and frustrating, and fucking awful, and yeah, she’s not a stranger to losses, but it’s Wimbledon and she’s not getting any younger and goddamn _Serena_ is left without a single real challenger to the title and Maria’s own boyfriend can’t stop _talking about it_.

“God, Grigor, shut up about Wimbledon!” she snaps.

She watches him freeze, with a sickening drop of her own stomach. She shouldn’t have said that. Bad strategy. Weak. 

He blinks for a long moment, the silence deafening, and then he runs his fingers gently up her inner thigh, the touch as much an apology as his quiet, “I’m sorry.”

It could have been perfunctory, it could have been obsequious, it could have been flustered and fast and self-flagellating. And yet his apology is none of those things – it’s just soft and rueful, as if he’s realized how the topic is hurting her and why she snapped. 

[Maybe he does realize. Maybe just because he’s younger, without as much experience, without the tough competitive skin she’s developed over the years (or has she always had it?) – maybe despite everything, maybe he still does understand. He’s a tennis player, after all.]

Maria swallows, reaches down to lay her hand against the side of his face, meeting his eyes. “Can we…” She doesn’t usually have trouble with her words, particularly not with him, but now she clears her throat, wills herself on. “Can we just be Masha and Dimi tonight?”

The tennis world is Maria’s world, and she loves it. Tomorrow she’ll start preparing for the next tournament, planning out her schedule and her travel and her training, pressing on towards the US Open (which she fully plans to win, thank you very much). Tomorrow she’ll put this week behind her and press on.

Tonight, though, Grigor smiles. “Yes,” he says, simply. “Yes, we can.”

As he bends his head with a playful leer, suiting action to word, Maria thinks that it’s not, it’s surely not, the end of this.

But maybe – just maybe – it’s a beginning.


End file.
